They Really DO Change Our Lives…

I often tell peo­ple that Stan­ford alum­ni change our lives on a reg­u­lar basis. I came across an unex­pect­ed angle on that today…

Stan­ford alum­nus Tiger Woods is per­haps the best known (and loved) ath­lete in the world today. He’s also a key fig­ure in cloth­ing trends!

When Tiger Woods wakes up this morn­ing, he will not have to think twice about his out­fit. It was picked out for him a year and a half ago, just like the clothes he will be wear­ing Fri­day through Sun­day at the U.S. Open at Olympia Fields.

It is all part of the mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy for Nike Golf, which scripts Woods’ clothes for the majors and then ships the mer­chan­dise to stores around the coun­try a cou­ple weeks after each major. Woods’ pop­u­lar­i­ty and the tele­vi­sion expo­sure gen­er­at­ed by the tour­na­ments com­bine to increase sales of the select­ed items.

…

‘I was just inun­dat­ed with phone calls after he wore [a short-sleeved mock turtle­neck],” said Lyn­da Reis, the appar­el buy­er for Chica­go Ten­nis and Golf. ”I could not believe the response. There have not been too many things I’ve had so many phone calls about. And the men will come in and say, ‘I don’t know if I’d wear it play­ing golf, but it looks so cool on him.”’

That’s not exact­ly what I had in mind when I told peo­ple about the influ­ence of Stan­ford’s alum­ni, but it does illus­trate the point in a bizarre sort of way. Tiger–a role mod­el to us all.

Read about Tiger’s styl­is­tic influ­ence.

Intelligence vs Integrity

Andrew found an inter­est­ing arti­cle called Too Smart To Be Dumb.

Here’s an excerpt:

Read­ing [the rel­e­vance of intel­li­gence] in a book review the oth­er day remind­ed me (for rea­sons you’ll soon under­stand) of a car acci­dent my wife and daugh­ter were lucky to walk away from three years ago. A 16-year-old dri­ving a new Lin­coln coupe hit them at 70 mph–twice the speed limit–after careen­ing off a hill­side. Lat­er that night the kid’s moth­er told me how shocked she was by the wit­ness reports of his reck­less dri­ving. “But he got 1550 on his SAT,” she cried.

“What do you do for a liv­ing?” I asked.

It was no sur­prise to hear that she’s a col­lege pro­fes­sor.

Like mil­lions of intel­lec­tu­al elites and wannabes, this woman pre­sumes an inher­ent con­nec­tion between intel­li­gence and good­ness, and between intel­li­gence and wis­dom, as though there exists some objec­tive domain of eth­i­cal­i­ty to which Men­sa mem­bers are auto­mat­i­cal­ly admit­ted.

The arti­cle is pri­mar­i­ly a polit­i­cal one, but it’s got a recur­ring theme that I found quite inter­est­ing: smart does­n’t imply moral. Read the arti­cle.

I Was Predestined To Believe In Free Will

Ques­tions about free will ever keep you up at night? I just read a great ram­bling round­table of an essay called Faith and The Sci­ence of Free Will.

It’s a response to an essay by John Hor­gan in the New York Times, which reads in part: A cou­ple of books I’ve been read­ing late­ly have left me brood­ing over the pos­si­bil­i­ty that free will is as much a myth as divine jus­tice. The chief offend­er is The Illu­sion of Con­scious Will, by Dr. Daniel M. Weg­n­er, a psy­chol­o­gist at Har­vard.… We think of will as a force, but actu­al­ly, Dr. Weg­n­er says, it is a feeling—“merely a feel­ing,” as he puts it—of con­trol over our actions. I think, “I’m going to get up now,” and when I do a moment lat­er, I cred­it that feel­ing with hav­ing been the insti­gat­ing cause. But as we all know, cor­re­la­tion does not equal cau­sa­tion.

The exchanges (sev­er­al peo­ple com­ment) are insight­ful, such as this one: My response to this is based on The Voli­tion­al Brain: Towards a Neu­ro­science of Free Will, edit­ed by Ben­jamin Libet (Imprint Aca­d­e­m­ic, 2000). As I under­stand it, Libet was actu­al­ly one of the sci­en­tists involved in the exper­i­ments that Dr. Weg­n­er refers to. The fact that Libet’s posi­tion is nowhere men­tioned makes me very sus­pi­cious of Weg­n­er’s agen­da.

The con­scious will appears to be ini­ti­at­ed by an uncon­scious brain event. If the exper­i­ment is cor­rect, then this calls into ques­tion free will. But Libet says the con­scious will can veto these sub­con­scious deci­sions (see page 51 of The Voli­tion­al Brain). The con­scious veto may itself have a pre­ced­ing uncon­scious process. But this would become an uncon­scious choice of which we become con­scious rather than a con­scious­ly causal event (52). The con­scious veto is a con­trol func­tion, not just sim­ply becom­ing aware of a wish to act. The role of con­scious free will would be, then, not to ini­ti­ate a vol­un­tary act, but rather to con­trol whether the act takes place. The eth­i­cal impli­ca­tions of this are actu­al­ly con­sis­tent with most eth­i­cal and reli­gious sys­tems. Most of the Ten Com­mand­ments are thou-shall-not com­mand­ments (54). The exper­i­ments cit­ed by Weg­n­er give us no indi­ca­tion that actions can­not be con­scious­ly con­trolled.

Pret­ty cool stuff. You can read an expand­ed ver­sion of the essay here.

Luis Trujillo, XA president, Helps Build Guatemalan Ministry Center

Check it out: our very own Chi Alpha pres­i­dent, Luis Tru­jil­lo, is in the Stan­ford Dai­ly for help­ing to con­struct a com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter for abused teens and oth­ers in Guatemala: Class designs facil­i­ty for Guatemalan town.

A Stan­ford archi­tec­ture class is play­ing a vital role in the con­struc­tion of a com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter and school in Amati­t­lan, Guatemala. Design­ing all aspects of the project — from dor­mi­to­ries to a church and retreat cen­ter — these stu­dents will show their work at a pro­fes­sion­al pre­sen­ta­tion to poten­tial clients and con­trib­u­tors on Mon­day.

The Guatemalan facil­i­ty will be a cam­pus for the Cen­ter for the Restora­tion of Women and the Social­ly Dis­re­gard­ed, also referred to as the CEREM project, after the Chris­t­ian orga­ni­za­tion spon­sor­ing its devel­op­ment. The cen­ter will act as a res­i­den­tial cen­ter and school for home­less chil­dren and for­mer pros­ti­tutes, as well as a church and place of retreat.

…

“One of the amaz­ing things about CEREM is the peo­ple who start­ed it,” said Luis Tru­jil­lo, anoth­er teach­ing assis­tant who is also act­ing as the client rep­re­sen­ta­tive respon­si­ble for com­mu­ni­cat­ing the facility’s needs to stu­dent design­ers. “They have real­ly chal­lenged me to give all that I have. You don’t do this because you feel sor­ry for these peo­ple, but rather you do it out of love for them and the poten­tial that you see in them.”

Luis has actu­al­ly been the key play­er in this thing from start to fin­ish. He’s got a mar­gin­al role in the arti­cle, but Luis is the guy who set the ball in motion, hooked CEREM up with the Stan­ford class, and has gen­er­al­ly been push­ing to make it hap­pen!

Way to go, Luis! We’re proud of you: get­ting a Stan­ford class to design a Chris­t­ian min­istry cen­ter is an awe­some way to lever­age the gifts and oppor­tu­ni­ties God has giv­en you.

UPDATE: there’s anoth­er arti­cle on the Stan­ford web­site that cov­ers the project from a slight­ly dif­fer­ent angle. It also gives Luis a lit­tle more promi­nence (well-deserved, I might add).

Driving Through The Redwoods

Last week­end Paula and I were preach­ing up in McKin­leyville, CA (almost all the way to Ore­gon). On the way, we had a chance to dri­ve through the giant red­wood trees (lit­er­al­ly). car_drive_through.jpg

If you’ve nev­er seen the trees before, it’s hard to under­stand how large they are. They get to be over 350 feet tall, over 2,000 years old, and weigh up to 1.7 mil­lion pounds! car_by_trees.jpg

We even got some cool shots of us in some tree trunks. glen_in_tree.jpg

No, we did­n’t try to count the rings…paula_on_tree.jpg

Hanging With The Students

xa_officers.jpgLast night Paula and I had next year’s Chi Alpha offi­cers over for sup­per. It was great (both the meal and the com­pa­ny)!

We laughed–a lot. That’s a good sign.

Left to right: Nate, Shaowei, Nathaniel.

Stanford Passwords

Just ran across this: More than 4 per­cent of dorm res­i­dents’ pass­words are eas­i­ly guessed, accord­ing to a Stan­ford pilot study. Ced Ben­nett, direc­tor of infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty ser­vices, gives some high­lights: “user,” “beat­cal” and “four-let­ter-word-cal.” (source)

A Busy Season Winds Down

Whew–I spoke three times today and par­tic­i­pat­ed in a reli­gious dis­cus­sion group! I’m a lit­tle drained. Worst of all was that my first engage­ment was two hours away, and I only had about two hours between my first and sec­ond appoint­ment (which was back here at Stan­ford)! We real­ly had to book it.

For­tu­nate­ly, we’re at the end of a busy sea­son. Last week­end I was in Spring­field help­ing to script a minis­eries (no, real­ly) that Chi Alpha is going to burn onto CDs and dis­trib­ute to col­lege stu­dents all across Amer­i­ca. I got back and went to preach in Modesto that Sun­day. Mon­day Paula and I drove up to the Lake Men­do­ci­no sec­tion­al fel­low­ship, and today I had all those speak­ing engage­ments… *whew*

That makes it almost two months that Paula and I have been run­ning around like chick­ens with our heads cut off. It was real­ly start­ing to affect my speak­ing: I’d say that none of the pre­sen­ta­tions I gave today were A‑quality. They were all B‑range. Soon I should be able to recharge and do bet­ter.

I feel kind of guilty. I should be a bet­ter mod­el for my stu­dents, but this sea­son of hec­tic activ­i­ty was pret­ty much nec­es­sary… *sigh*

Oh well, at least it’s over (I think).

Jesus, Ethics, and Us

these are notes from a class pre­sen­ta­tion I gave in Ron Howard’s class The Eth­i­cal Ana­lyst about ethics in Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive

The Hid­den Dan­ger of Ethics Class­es
There is a great but hid­den dan­ger in class­es such as this. By spend­ing hours debat­ing moral issues we too often train our­selves for ratio­nal­iza­tion instead of right­eous­ness. There is no point in try­ing to under­stand good unless we also seek to be good!

Why Should We Care What Chris­tian­i­ty Says?
Today it is com­mon to regard Chris­tian­i­ty as moral­ly bank­rupt. This is naïve and rep­re­sents mas­sive prej­u­dice.
Con­tin­ue read­ing “Jesus, Ethics, and Us”

Great Day!

Today I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to go and just spend some time on cam­pus watch­ing stu­dents in their nat­ur­al habi­tat. I was expect­ing to just sit down and set up my lap­top and work on ser­mon prep and mak­ing some phone calls all day, but instead I bumped into stu­dents I knew every­where I turned around!

Kwasi biked by after I set up, and then I bumped into Shaowei upstairs, and short­ly after that I bumped into Jim­my and a friend of his named Winona I had­n’t met before. Jim­my and I talked for sev­er­al hours about all sorts of stuff, and then Song showed up.

Song and I talked about dif­fer­ent ways to raise mon­ey for missions–he’s plan­ning to bike across Amer­i­ca this sum­mer. I hope it works out, ’cause it sounds real­ly cool.